4 Tidying Tactics that work for Busy Parents
I love to leaf through a magazine and gawk at the beautifully depicted tidy homes inside, or check out the latest glossy Home Edit book from the library. Since having children though, my eye catches some interesting things…
“Wait, how many people live in this home? Apparently, however many that is, they own a sum total of 1 hat, 2 jackets, and 3 pairs of shoes?”
“Uh, where’s the rest of the toilet paper?!” (let me tell you how quickly this family of 4 ladies would tear through those 3 beautifully presented rolls)
And though I adore the look of legos organized by color of the rainbow, I now know the exact futility of this kind of effort. If you also drool over these immaculate spaces, you may be inclined to throw your hands up and say “that will never be my life.” Instead of giving in to a house full of mayhem, read on for realistic tactics for imperfect humans with busy lives and even busier children. There’s no shortage of organizing advice out there - these are a few things that have worked particularly well for our family.
1: Enlist those pesky kids in your tidying efforts.
My wife and I are just as sold on gentle parenting methods as the rest of our generation. Gentle parenting, however, doesn’t have to mean having no expectations of your children. Not only are children capable of helping keep a tidy home, many of them actually enjoy it; it can give them a sense of purpose, autonomy, and control. You can sweeten the deal by making tidying into a game, using a chore chart with incentives, and praising their efforts (no matter how small). Other tactics that can support your child’s tidying tendencies:
Install hooks that are within their reach, so they can be in charge of hanging up their coat and backpack when they get home.
Tidy as a family! Put on fun music and tidy together for 10 minutes (start with 5 for tinier kiddos). Make this activity part of your daily or weekly routine.
Expect habit development to take time. Don’t give up after asking your children to put away their shoes twice. It took about a week for our girls to start consistently hanging up their things after school, with daily reminders and plenty of fanfare.
2: Buy in bulk and decant.
Buying in bulk is certainly easier on your wallet, but that’s not all it has to offer. Fitting differently-shaped boxes and bags of food in your pantry can create a challenge - how to fit things together so that everything is visible? Food that is not seen, is not eaten. And who among us has the brain space to remember what’s hiding behind the Costco-sized Cheerios box? Decanting things like cereal, pasta, rice, and other dry goods into labeled, identical containers can allow you (and your children) to see what you have at a glance. I get it - the last thing I want to do when I get home from the grocery store is spend more time putting the groceries away. But those extra 10 minutes can save me the time and heartache of throwing out all the food that went bad while hibernating in the depths of our cupboards. Decanting can also help you take inventory before you hit the store and buy 3 more of something you already had plenty of.
3: Hold regular “chuck-outs”
Every time we donate half of our children’s toys to the Goodwill we brace ourselves for the pile of tears when they find out what we’ve done. Do you know what happens instead? They ignore the tv and head for the potato head that was formerly buried under a pile of things they didn’t care about. It turns out that, for both children and adults, our brains work much better when we have less to process. We hold an annual drive for a nonprofit org that gets gently used children’s stuff into the hands of those who need it, and ahead of this year’s drive we told the children they could choose 10 stuffies each to keep - the rest went off to other homes. This was a surprisingly tear-free event, and it inspired me to ditch some of the pairs of shoes I haven’t worn in awhile. The lesson here is that getting rid of things that don’t matter allows you to appreciate the things that do.
4: Teach Yourself to Embrace “Good Enough”
As KC Davis, therapist and creator of the Struggle Care podcast, says “Everything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.” Keeping things tidy takes time - something none of us has in excess. If you’re expecting a perfectly tidy home while balancing a full-time job while caring for children, aging parents, and pets and trying to exercise and keep up with friendships and that board of directors you unwittingly joined, you’re setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. In the spirit of those gratitude practices we roll our eyes at each time our phone reminds us of this additional obligation, try appreciating what is looking great in your home.
So go forth and enjoy browsing through other people’s perfectly tidy homes all you want…but then consider how you might add just a touch of organization to bring the chaos of your own home down to a more tolerable level.
tldr: Don’t let unrealistically tidy homes get you down! You can have a tidy(ish) house too. Enlist your kids to help tidy, buy in bulk and decant items so you can see all the food you have, get rid of stuff regularly (especially toys!), and teach yourself to have realistic expectations of what “tidy” looks like in your house.
Ready to chat about how I can help your family create workable organization systems? Reach out now for a free consultation.
